The Hobbit

[comrade_general]

[Jubal]

Stop!

...don't fire!

 

[comrade_general]

[Gen_Glory]

[Jubal]

Well... after-match report.

The good:
- Stephen Fry as the Master of Lake-Town was excellent
- Ditto for Bard and The Cumbersmaug
- Lake-town and Mirkwood were both great in terms of scenery

The bad:
- Goddamnit they did not read my papers on Dwarf history. That armadillo was factually incorrect.
- Love triangle. What?
- Love triangle. This deserves at least two points because what.
- Action scenes got too zany at times.

All in all, decent fantasy film, worse than Part 1 as a book adaptation. The stuff with Beorn's house should have been longer and more developed, the love triangle cut right out, and probably actually more Lake-Town would have been nice. Less Elves generally, silly pointy-eared pansies.

[comrade_general]

YES. Good now I can talk about it.

Totally disappointed with Beorn. I was looking forward to the whole entrance thing where Gandalf keeps him preoccupied with talking while more and more dwarves stroll in, but no, we just wake up the next morning and he's pouring everyone some rancid milk and telling them to piss off.

Love triangle is totally useless. Kili is a bitch. I think Pete (possibly with pressure from wife and Phillipa) is getting back at the fans for (rightfully) not letting them have Eowyn engaged in battle at Helm's Deep like they had first planned. So now they make up whatsherface and do the love triangle with now-creepy-looking-legoland and Kilo.

[Jubal]

I don't mind Tauriel existing even, just get rid of the goddamn love triangle and it would be an admittedly non-canon and slightly superfluous but actually not too terrible character. You may well be right on motivations, though I think more generally they wanted to not have a feature film with no named female characters in it. And yeah, Dwarfs with beardlessness fetishes are just frankly odd. 

And yes, the entrance to the Carrock is a scene that would have worked fantastically and I was really, really disappointed about the lack of it. I think it would have worked well with the actors too.

[Son of the King]

You summarised my entire opinion on it in your post Jubal.

[comrade_general]

I failed in my post.

[Pentagathus]

I would agree with most of Jubal's post, except that I would not say it was a decent film. It was a bad film. Pretty portugaling disappointing considering that it could have easily been a very good film.

[Scarlet]

I can't say you're all convincing me to go and see it...

[comrade_general]

I'm somewhat inclined to agree with Pent. Even though they are stretching one tiny book out to three films they really haven't taken the time to dwell on any one thing making it feel too fast-paced.

[Son of the King]

I'm somewhat inclined to agree with Pent. Even though they are stretching one tiny book out to three films they really haven't taken the time to dwell on any one thing making it feel too fast-paced.

This exact thing. Three films gives them enough runtime to be incredibly faithful to the book and to do everything really well, but instead its been rushed through for the sake of action sequences...

[Jubal]

We need an Exilian version. 

[comrade_general]

I'll get right on it.